Glaze Recipes

I have received many requests for the kaffir lime ginger glaze recipe. I keep forgetting to post it.

The story behind this glaze is kind of funny. I had just made a sweet and sour soup and my mother-in-law came into the kitchen to help clean up. She saw the leftover kaffir lime leaves, picked them up and was about to throw them in the trash. Even though we get our kaffir lim leaves from our garden, it felt like a waste. I shrieked and told her, I told her that I was going to use them. She asked me how I planned on using the leaves since we weren't making any more soup. I had to come up with something fast, so I said that I would use them in the glaze for the apricot tarts that were in the oven.

I added a little ginger to the syrup to balance out the citrus-y flavor of the kaffir lime leaves and I incorporated a little cornstarch to the syrup to get a thicker consistency because typically I use fruit jellies as a glaze. It turned out wonderfully.

Tandoori paste is a true culinary chameleon. In Indian cuisine, it is commonly used with chicken in the eponymously titled dish. But there are so many more possibilities. We just purchased some sea bass for a dinner party, and I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to marry the very strong blend of flavors in the tandoori paste with the rich, buttery texture of the sea bass.

Speaking of marriage, the idea for a tandoori glaze came to me after our wedding reception menu tasting. It was almost 5 years ago. How time flies! Anyway, our caterer gave us a lot of samples to taste before the big day. One of the options was a hoisin glazed roasted Chilean sea bass. It tasted wonderful and it got me thinking about other "ethnic" flavors to marinate the fish.

Happy New Year! My resolution for year 2009 is to post a new recipe everyday. I decided to start with a tarte amandine because one of the main components of the dish is frangipane, a buttery almond filling. I'm originally from France and frangipane figures heavily into the traditional cake, called Galette des Rois (litterally Kings' Cake), which is served in the month of January to commemorate the Christian Holiday of Epiphany.